Leó Szilárd

Leó Szilárd (, February 11, 1898 ? May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian physicist who conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi, and in late 1939 wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project, and the atomic bomb.

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He was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and died in La Jolla, California.

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Szilárd was born into a Jewish family of Budapest at the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy before World War I as the son of a civil engineer. From 1908?1916 he attended Reáliskola in his home town. He was enrolled as an engineering student at Budapest Technical University during 1916 but had to join the Austro-Hungarian Army during 1917 as officer-candidate where he was discharged honorably at the end of the war. During 1919 he resumed engineering studies at Budapest Technical University but soon decided to leave Hungary because of the rising antisemitism under the Horthy regime which caused the introduction of a numerus clausus for Jewish students at Hungary's universities. He continued engineering studies at Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He soon changed to physics there and took physics classes from Einstein, Planck, and Max von Laue. His dissertation on thermodynamics Über die thermodynamischen Schwankungserscheinungen (On The Manifestation of Thermodynamic Fluctuations) during 1922 was praised by Einstein and awarded the highest honor. During 1923 he received the doctorate in physics from the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was appointed as assistant to von Laue at the University of Berlin's Institute for Theoretical Physics during 1924. During 1927 he finished his habilitation and became a Privatdozent (instructor) in Physics at University of Berlin. During his time in Berlin he was working on numerous technical inventions (1928 German patent application on the linear accelerator, 1929 German patent application on the cyclotron, since 1926 work with Einstein on the construction of a refrigerator without moving parts (US patent 1,781,541 on November 11, 1930).

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Manhattan Project: [[Image:Calutrons at Oak Ridge.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Control panels and operators for calutrons at the Y-12 National Security Complex|Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge National Laboratory|Oak Ridge, Tennessee....